Sound issues

(Swad) #1

Been a while since I’ve played ET, but now I’m back–and with me being back are sound issues I never had before. I did search this forum and in fact did find some others with sounds issues that sound almost exactly like mine. Just to start off with, I am using onboard nVidia SoundStorm sound on an Asus A7N9X Deluxe motherboard. Great sound card for most things, but ET sure doesn’s seem to like it after a while.

After a while of playing, my sounds start cutting short at the beginning. They will start playing like 1 second into the sound, so things are always sounding odd because the sound starts part way into it. This is for everything–voice, gunshots, ambietn sounds like planes, etc. With this the sounds are also a lot more poppy and sometimes have high levels of static.

I have tried one suggestion I saw of upping the sound megs from default 24… I made it 32. That has done nothing (and I don’t see how this would really make things better). I also have DX hardware accel for sound up all the way. I’m not sure what else to try. I just recently installed new drivers for my chipset and really don’t want to do it again, but will if deemed necessary. Just to add, I use Ventrilo voice comms while playing, and the sound for that never get’s all crappy, yet the game does.

So are there any fixes to this sound issue?

(Mr Hyde) #2

Might be a bit on the obvious side, but have you tried adjusting the sound quality settings in the ET front end? if its at 22khz this would explain the hissing bit, up it to 44khz.
No idea about the sound chopping off early tho… maybe a fresh install of the game?

good luck dood

(Sauron|EFG) #3

Do you mean the A7N[b]8[b]X? If so I have the exact same board, and ET works just fine with default settings. I’m using version 2.45 of the nVidia nForce driver and W2K.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_winxp_2.45

(Swad) #4

Typo–yeah, I meant an 8–A7N8X Deluxe. I do have the 2.45 nVidia drivers as well. As for the other suggestion, I have tried both 22 and 44khz. I suppose I may have to just try a reinstall of the game next. I’m at a loss as to why it just starts happening after a while of playing and not up front.

(Mr Hyde) #5

Tis a bit wierd… :huh:

(-=eVilBoB=-[SCO]) #6

Try changing your hardware acceleration in advanced audio properties from full to 3/4…worked on my machine when I was having some similar problems.

(Swad) #7

Are you talking about in dxdiag? I think I have already tried that, though I may look at it again. If you’re talking about somewhere else, tell me where.

(Lekdevil.NL) #8

Unfortunately I’m having the exact same problems. Sometimes (I’d say once every few days), the sounds become all garbled, either skipping parts of the samples, starting too late or getting cut off. This usually happens after playing ET for some time (like 20 minutes).

I’ve just completed building a Shuttle XPC system, which has a FN45 mobo based on the nForce2 chipset. When Googling around you’ll find a lot of people having similar issues with the nForce2 onboard sound.

My own take on it is that it’s either caused by a bug in the Forceware drivers (I’m using 2.45 as well), by the insanely high number of devices using one shared interrupt (I’m counting 7 using IRQ 20, including the audio device) or by a combination of both factors.

As suggested above, a remedy often mentioned is lowering the audio hardware acceleration slider. I haven’t tried that one yet, so YMMV.

A temporary fix from within ET might be to issue the \snd_restart command in the console. This usually clears things up (although it also reloads the map).

If all else fails, I’d suggest disabling the onboard sound and using an el cheapo SoundBlaster Live! PCI board. I’d hate to do this, because my Shuttle only has one PCI slot, and it’s already taken. It might be an option for you, though.

Please let us know if you find any solution.

Cheers.

(FstFngrz) #9

I was getting it fairly consistently with my updated but outdated system.
(piii800, 384M, Vid-64MPCI, Xppro, SBlive onboard, intel mb)

Since doing this below ONCE (read=ONE TIME) it hasnt stuck nearly as frequently ( it almost seems now as if i can catch the sound loop “sticking” and by pressing a movement key it “unsticks” it and then i press F8 (bind F8 s_stop) about 5 times just for fun- exciting Huh :

XP-control panel/sounds/audio/advanced/performance: Hardware accel. set to 3/4 and sample rate set to 50%.

And

  1. Start ET- not in Fullscreen.
  2. Ctrl Alt Del(open tsk mngr)/Processes/ET.exe/rightclick/Set Priority to BelowNormal.
    (setting the priority for ET.exe below normal I think helped the most, I set it to High priority at first(to just try it) and got really bad sound and movement “lag” )
(Swad) #10

That’s a pretty busy routine to do each time–I’d quit the game before I went through all of that. That and if I had to install a new soundcard, I would quit as well. I don’t get these issues with the other games I play. Of course I don’t want to quit so I’ll continue looking for a solution. I won’t give up my SoundStorm though… it’s a top notch device for sound. Hopefully dropping hardware accel one notch will help some.

(Eyes of Texas) #11

I haven’t had a single problem with my SB Audigy. That’s why I splurged on it… who really wants onboard sound? Not me.

(Lekdevil.NL) #12

I’ve found some articles that might shed some light on issues concerning ACPI, sound quality and interrupt assignment.

XP3200+/nForce2 article on Lost Circuits: http://www.lostcircuits.com/cpu/amd_xp3200new/2.shtml

Article about ACPI and sound problems: http://service.steinberg.net/knowledge_pro.nsf/show/acpi_kills_audio_performance.

(Swad) #13

You have to realize that onboard sound is no longer what it used to be. It has come a long ways on some boards, and rivals–and beats–many add-on sound cards. The particular soundcard I have is the nVidia SoundStorm. It typically ranks just below an Audigy 2 in most hardware reviews, and definitely above Audigy. I myself have an Audigy as well, but it is shelved in favor of the SoundStorm for very good reasons. You’d be quite suprised how many people these days use onboard sound when it comes with something as good as SoundStorm.